Yes, the more remote is a person, the larger number of other people can affect them from the same distance and typically the share of my impact is very small, unless I am in very special position which could affect a future person.
For example, I am planting a landmine which will self-liquidate either in 100 or 10 000 years, and while self-liquidating it will likely kill a random person. If I discount future people, I will choose 10 000 years, even if it will kill more people in future. However, if I think that humanity will likely extinct by then, it will be still a reasonable bet.
Well, I was arguing that we should discount in proportion to our uncertainty. And it seems you’re pretty confident that it would kill future people (and more people, and we don’t expect people in 10K years to want to die anymore than people in 100 years), so I think I would prefer to plant the 100 years landmine.
That said, expectations of technological progress, that the future would be more resilient, that they can better deal with the landmine, etc. means that in practice (outside the thought experiment), I’ll probably plant the 10K landmine as I expect less people to actually die.
Yes, the more remote is a person, the larger number of other people can affect them from the same distance and typically the share of my impact is very small, unless I am in very special position which could affect a future person.
For example, I am planting a landmine which will self-liquidate either in 100 or 10 000 years, and while self-liquidating it will likely kill a random person. If I discount future people, I will choose 10 000 years, even if it will kill more people in future. However, if I think that humanity will likely extinct by then, it will be still a reasonable bet.
Well, I was arguing that we should discount in proportion to our uncertainty. And it seems you’re pretty confident that it would kill future people (and more people, and we don’t expect people in 10K years to want to die anymore than people in 100 years), so I think I would prefer to plant the 100 years landmine.
That said, expectations of technological progress, that the future would be more resilient, that they can better deal with the landmine, etc. means that in practice (outside the thought experiment), I’ll probably plant the 10K landmine as I expect less people to actually die.